


No Such Thing As Ghosts

by zade



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Era, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ghosts, M/M, Murphamy Week, Slow Burn, one moment of mild gore, or mild body horror, slowish it's a short fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-14 01:33:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16483550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zade/pseuds/zade
Summary: Clarke was still giving him that sharp look, and she pulled him off to the side of camp where they wouldn’t be overheard.  “Bellamy, I know the name of every single one of us, and there’s no John Murphy.”No, no, that couldn’t be.  He hadseenhim, spoken with him.  Bellamy shook his head, unwilling to let her sway him.  “That can’t be.  Maybe you missed one, princess, he’s sneaky.”--supernatural/paranormal for murphamy week!!





	No Such Thing As Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> for the murphamy week prompt paranormal or supernatural
> 
> no warnings except one brief moment of gore
> 
> unbeta'd and it's midnight so there are typos

Bellamy didn’t notice the boy for the first three days. He figured he had to have interacted with him, because the boy was leaning up against their makeshift barricade, and he didn’t have one of Abby’s bracelets on, which meant that Bellamy almost certainly had helped him take it off. He was distinctive looking, however, and Bellamy struggled to believe he would have been able to overlook him.

He approached the boy cautiously, who uncrossed his arms to offer Bellamy a lazy salute when he saw him. As he got closer, Bellamy noticed that the boy’s clothing was cleaner and less stitched together than the rest of the delinquents, but before Bellamy could say anything about it, he spoke. “It’s not going to be enough to hold them off.”

“Not with that attitude.” Bellamy leaned against the wall next to him. “What’s your name?”

The boy sighed, crossing his arms again. “John Murphy. Everyone calls me Murphy though. There were a lot of Johns in the group home.”

Group home was such an archaic word that Bellamy was frozen in surprise for a moment. Orphaned kids went to the skybox until they were 18, then released. It was, he supposed, a group home in a way, and there had been a lot of Johns in the skybox. “Look, if you’re worried about the wall, then help us build it. If we’re going to fight off the Grounders—”

“Why do you call them the Grounders, anyway?” Murphy asked, rolling his eyes. “They were here first. You might as well call yourselves the Skyers. See how dumb that sounds?”

Oh, but Murphy was irritating. Bellamy could feel his hackles rise, but fought down the irritation, placing his hand over his eyes. “It’s just to differentiate, because we don’t know what they call themselves and—hang on, why did you say ‘yourselves’ and not ‘ourselves’?” When Bellamy opened his eyes, Murphy hand vanished, gone without a trace. He sighed, and decided to leave it for now. He’d try to talk sense into Murphy later.

The next time he saw Murphy, Bellamy was busy gathering up nuts. He preferred to hunt rather than gather, but they all had to do some tasks they didn’t like to make sure things got done.

“Shouldn’t eat those,” Murphy said from behind him, scaring the shit out of Bellamy.

“Fuck!” Bellamy swore, dropping all the nuts he had gathered in his surprise, and turning to Murphy with irritation. “Where did you even come from? I didn’t see you leaving camp.”

Murphy smirked lazily, leaning up against the tree, and Bellamy felt his irritation growing. “I have my ways.”

Bellamy straightened, angrily. They didn’t have time for this—the Grounders could be coming any day now, and they had to be prepared. “If there are holes in our defenses, I need to know, Murphy.”

Murphy’s face softened slightly, and he looked suddenly very young. “Oh. You remembered my name.”

That stopped Bellamy in his tracks. He had definitely been intense in those first few days, but he didn’t think he had given the impression he was disconnected enough to not remember one of his people’s names. “Of course I did, John.” He held Murphy’s gaze until Murphy shook his head and looked away.

Murphy gestured at a plant next to the one Bellamy had been gathering nuts from and nodded his head. “Collect that one, instead. The roots kinda look like nuts, and if you cook ’em up they last for a really long time. They one you were getting, though, if you leave them for too long they’ll make you trip balls. So maybe stash some the medicine chest, but outside of that, they are not your friends”

Bellamy knelt back down, pulling the plant up by the stalk, and there at the roots was something that did resemble a nut. He grabbed a few more, determined to take them back to Monty and Clarke, who knew more about plants and medicine than him, respectively, and said, “How did you even find out about this, Murphy?” He turned to thank Murphy, only to find that he had disappeared like he was never there at all.

When he got back to camp, he gave the nuts to Monty, explained his suspicion about the ones they had been eating, and set off to see if anyone knew what tent Murphy had been sleeping in. Nobody seemed to know, and no one he asked the next day, either. Bellamy was beyond frustrated at his lack of progress when Clarke came up to him smiling. 

“That was a good call on the nuts,” she said. “People were already beginning to experience…side effects from what we were eating.” It was a very nice and professional way to say that some of their friends had gotten high and attempted to cook some pine needles as dinner.

“Yeah, no problem.” He still had trouble speaking to Clarke now that they were on equal footing. Some small part of him hated that she was back in charge, considering it was practically her birthright, and he and his had suffered at her parents hands, but Clarke _was_ a good leader, and he knew they needed leadership if they were going to survive the Grounders. “Murphy told me. I have no idea where he found it out—maybe he’s got an in like my sister.” He tried not to sound bitter when talking about Octavia, but it was hard; he didn’t like who she was turning into and didn’t like that he felt that way about her.

Clarke frowned at him. “Murphy?”

Bellamy’s thoughts were still on Octavia so it took a moment for him to come back to the subject at hand. “Yeah, John Murphy. His hair is longish in front, sharp nose…” he trailed off when he saw the look Clarke was giving him. “Do you seriously not know who I’m talking about?”

Clarke was still giving him that sharp look, and she pulled him off to the side of camp where they wouldn’t be overheard. “Bellamy, I know the name of every single one of us, and there’s no John Murphy.”

No, no, that couldn’t be. He had _seen_ him, spoken with him. Bellamy shook his head, unwilling to let her sway him. “That can’t be. Maybe you missed one, princess, he’s sneaky.”

Clarke sighed irritably. He could tell she didn’t believe him and he hated that; he knew what he had seen. “Don’t call me that. I’m just saying. We need everyone at the top of their game. Get some sleep, maybe.”

He didn’t think he was going crazy, but maybe he was, if no one else knew who this boy was. The doubt itched just under his skin, and Bellamy was restless and angry, but he knew better than to take out on any of their people, and instead retired to his tent where he could experience his feelings in peace.

He found Murphy sitting on the floor of his tent, tossing a pebble back and forth from hand to hand. “Who the fuck are you?” Bellamy demanded, closing his tent behind him and stalking over to Murphy. “How did you get in here? What the fuck is going on?”

Murphy sighed, and the pebble slipped through his hands and onto the floor. “I’m just trying to help.”

“Bullshit.” Murphy didn’t move or stand or defend himself in anyway, but something about his attitude unnerved him so Bellamy unsheathed his dagger and menaced it at Murphy. “Explain yourself. Now. Are you some sort of spy?”

Murphy shook his head, slowly standing. “No. I just got lonely and didn’t want to watch a bunch of teenagers die. Thought I’d help.”

Bellamy glared, stepping towards Murphy so the knife was only a few inches away from Murphy, who was standing placidly. “If you think that explains anything—”

“Plus,” Murphy barreled on, “Trikru got sick of me and honestly I got sick of them, too. I think they thought I was some sort of trickster. Not like a god, but some sort of entity, and it was exhausting keeping that up.”

“Okay enough of this.” Bellamy stepped forward, the knife pressed now against Murphy’s neck. “Explain yourself right now, or I’ll drag you out there and you can explain yourself to our whole camp, and I promise they’ll be way less patient than I am.” Murphy looked him in the eye and stepped forward, the knife disappearing into his neck. Or, through his neck, rather. Bellamy dropped the knife and jumped back, but all that accomplished was he got to watch the knife fall through Murphy’s body before it hit the ground. He could feel his heart pounding his chest a mile a minute and panic rising in his stomach.

Murphy bent over gingerly and picked up the knife blade first, offering it to Bellamy.

Bellamy grabbed it quickly, wanting to armed even though he was beginning to think that wouldn’t help him. He realized the angle he had pulled at surely sliced Murphy’s hand, but when he looked it was unmarred. “What _are_ you?”

Murphy laughed, but it was tight, harsh laugh that made Bellamy feel somewhat guilty. “I’m dead.”

That didn’t make any sense, and Bellamy decided to tell him as much. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Before his eyes, Murphy’s skin bubbled and melted, half of his face obliterated by gore and open sores and blood, his clothes tattering and melting to his skin and—

Bellamy realized he had his eyes shut. He couldn’t look, he couldn’t. He didn’t want to see it, and if he looked again he might actually vomit.

“My face is back on. You can open your eyes. Promise I won’t melt again without warning.”

Bellamy took a deep breath, and tried to realign everything he knew so that Ghosts Exist was a part of his knowledge base, but it was a dizzying prospect. “Are there others like you?” he asked, still clutching his knife like a security blanket with his eyes clenched shut.

Murphy sighed, then sucked his teeth. “Statistically speaking, almost certainly. It’s been almost a century, though, and I haven’t met anyone else like me.”

Bellamy cracked his eyes open, and was relieved to see Murphy looking normal. “A century?” It made sense. Murphy’s injuries looked like radiation damage, he must have gotten caught in the blast and died an agonizing death—possibly alone. And he’d been alone since then. “Must have been lonely.” Bellamy slowly sheathed his dagger, watching Murphy watch him do it.

Murphy scoffed, but his expression had softened since Bellamy had stowed the knife. “That’s why I talked to Trikru. Mountain Men a few times. Figured out how long I can make myself corporeal for. There’s a certain area I can’t leave but it’s not too small, so it’s fine.”

Bellamy sat down slowly, and Murphy mirrored him. If Murphy was corporeal, their knees would have been almost touching and Bellamy suddenly desperately wanted their knees to be able to touch. “Do you speak Grounder then?”

Murphy barked a laugh, leaning towards Bellamy and for a moment Bellamy could feel the warmth of another body next to his before it faded. “Aw man are you new. There are about a million dialects. I speak a few.”

It occurred to Bellamy how helpful that could be. It felt a little Machiavellian, but he knew better than to say no to an advantage. “Would you be able to help us? Parlay between our two groups?”

“Would I be able to? Yes.” Murphy reached out slowly, and Bellamy copied the gesture until their fingertips were almost brushing. “Am I going to? No. Listen, I’ve been watching you all, and I don’t want you all to die, but if you did, I am still going to be here indefinitely and if the Trikru won’t speak to me I’ll go crazy. More crazy.”

Bellamy could sort of understand that, as much as he hated it. “Could you teach me some, then? So I can speak to them?”

Murphy laughed again, pressing his fingertips gently to Bellamy’s. It was a light touch, but Bellamy could feel it, which filled him with a warmth he couldn’t explain. “Trust me when I say that their leader will be even less likely to listen to you if she thinks someone has betrayed her and is teaching you stuff.” The touch disappeared suddenly and Murphy’s fingers slipped through his. He started going hazy, fading in and out. “I overextended myself,” he said embarrassed, then winked at Bellamy. “You’ll be seeing me soon, though.” 

He disappeared, and Bellamy was left alone in his tent with his thoughts, and swarming sense of confusion in his guts.

Murphy came around more, after that. He tended to pop up most when Bellamy was either in his tent or doing some activity on his own, so Bellamy had given up ever convincing Clarke that Murphy was real and instead, gradually growing to like the friendship he had built with Murphy. It was stupid, but Bellamy liked having a friend he whose safety he didn’t have to worry after.

That sort of worry—his friends, his sister—was the type he focused on at night, by himself. It had been a few weeks, and Bellamy was still having trouble sleeping on the ground. He sighed, restless, and turned over. At this point, he wasn’t surprised to see Murphy sitting up next to him.

“What was it like in space?” Murphy asked him, suddenly. He didn’t ask about space much, and Bellamy suspected it was because he was bitter than he died instead of having a chance to go space himself, and Bellamy also couldn’t really blame him.

Bellamy thought for a moment, then said, “Loud.” It was the reason he couldn’t sleep, really. 

Murphy frowned. “Huh. I would have thought it would be quiet because of the whole, no-sound-in-space-thing.”

Bellamy reached out and his hand landed solidly on Murphy’s knee, and Murphy grinned at him. It was nice, being able to touch him, to connect physically. “Between the engines and air filtration, there was always low level noise. It’s so quiet on the ground.”

“Well, you gotta sleep or the Trikru’s gonna get the best of you, dipshit. Go to sleep.”

Bellamy rolled his eyes. “If it were that easy I’d be asleep, asshole.” He was lying down and Murphy was sitting, so he had to crane his neck to see him, but Murphy was smiling a surprisingly open smile, and it was worth the ache in his neck.

“Closing your eyes would be the first step.” When Bellamy didn’t, Murphy groaned, reaching out to flick him in the forehead. It didn’t sting as much as normal flick, but he could feel it, and that counted for something. “Close your eyes. Trust me, Bell.”

Other than Octavia, Murphy was the only other person to call him Bell, and he sort of loved it, although he would never admit it to either of them. He struggled to want to close his eyes. It wasn’t so much an issue of trusting or not trusting Murphy, as much as it was an issue of wanting to look at Murphy for every moment he could. He gave in, closing his eyes with an exaggerated eye roll.

Once his eyes were shut, he heard Murphy begin to hum softly. It wasn’t a tune he was familiar with, but it soft enough that it was unobtrusive, background sound almost, which was exactly what Bellamy had needed. He didn’t know the song, but that made him like it more, some relic from earth’s history past. He could feel himself drifting, but before he fell asleep, he was almost positive he could feel finger twirling around in his curls.

At breakfast the next morning Clarke came up to him with a very concerned expression on her face. “Bellamy. Last night I heard something coming out of your tent. It sounded like singing—or, or humming? And I heard you talking, and another voice replying. Anything you want to tell me?”

The assurance that Clarke heard Murphy resolved the last of Bellamy’s doubts, but that didn’t mean he wanted to talk to her about him again. “Nope.” She looked doubtful, but didn’t press it for which he was grateful. He felt better than he had in weeks, having actually slept, and he wasn’t about to let anything change that. Murphy’s presence was like a balm for the ground, and he was grateful for it.

A few nights later, Bellamy found him wandering through the forest at night. He knew he shouldn’t be out there by himself, but he was looking for his sister and he knew she had been interested in the bioluminescent butterflies before, so it seemed as good a place as any to start. She wasn’t there, but Murphy was, standing in a bunch of glowing butterflies. He smiled when Bellamy came close, and Bellamy felt something inside of him get a little gooey.

“Is it incredibly insensitive to say that I wish you hadn’t died?” Bellamy asked, leaning up next to Murphy on the tree trunk as gently as he could so as not to disturb all the butterflies.

“Yes,” Murphy said emphatically.

Bellamy shrugged. “Consider me insensitive, then.”

Murphy hummed thoughtfully. “Well, for what it’s worth, I also wish that. And not just because dying was the most singularly painful thing I could imagine.” Murphy leaned up against Bellamy, so they were touching shoulder to hip. Murphy smiled at him, a bittersweet little smile. “Close your eyes for me again? I have something I want to show you.”

Bellamy grumbled, but closed his eyes obligingly. He was only a little surprised to feel Murphy’s lips against his own. Everything had told him they were headed towards this place, but more than anything Bellamy was surprised he could physically feel the kiss. The touch was light, almost too light to feel real, but at the same time he was overcome by how right it felt, how much he wanted to have Murphy’s lips on his forever. It couldn’t last, he knew. Murphy was barely a physical presence and the ground was dangerous enough that Bellamy knew realistically he wouldn’t survive forever.

Maybe when he died, they could be ghosts together. That would be pretty cool, he supposed. Either way, Bellamy thought, kissing back as forcefully as he dared, he would hold onto this for every moment he could.

**Author's Note:**

> hello i am gabe racetrackthehiggins and it's fucking late


End file.
